Hurry Harry, Deerslayer, Judith, and Hetty are the four principal characters in Cooper's famous book, which has delighted many thousands of readers.

Hurry Harry, as he was nicknamed, his real name being Harry March, had a dashing, reckless, off-hand manner, and a restlessness that kept him constantly moving about from place to place. He was six feet four in height, well proportioned, with a good-humoured, handsome face. Deerslayer was a very different man from Hurry Harry, both, in appearance and character. He, too, was tall, being six feet high, but with a comparatively light and slender frame. His face was not handsome, but his expression invited confidence, for it had a look of truth and sincerity.

Hurry was twenty-eight years of age and Deerslayer several years younger. Their dress was composed of deer-skins, and they were armed with rifles, powder-horns, and hunting-knives. The two men were guided by very different principles, those of Hurry Harry being entirely selfish, while Deerslayer sought, backwoodsman though he was, to live up to what he called 'white-man's nature.'

Judith and Hetty were supposed to be the daughters of a man known as 'Floating Tom,' otherwise Thomas Hutter, a man who had been a noted pirate in his younger days, but in his later years had settled down—as he hoped, beyond the reach of the King's cruisers—to enjoy his plunder.

At the time at which the story is laid Britain and France were at war, fighting in Canada, and it is said that neither side had refrained from offering payment for scalps. Whatever excuse there may have been for tribes of Indians taking the scalps of their enemies, there can have been none for Christian white men, and so Deerslayer held, but not so Hurry Harry and Thomas Hutter, both of whom, as we shall notice, suffered for their cruel practices.

If Hurry and Deerslayer were unlike in appearance, character, and principle, so, too, were Judith and Hetty. Judith was very handsome, quick-witted, fond of admiration and fine clothes, while Hetty was not beautiful to look at. Hetty was possessed of a weak mind, and cared little for the admiration of others, although she was of an affectionate nature. Her principles were good, and she ever sought to follow the good she knew, her constant companion being her Bible, for which she had the deepest reverence, while the good counsels of her mother, whose body rested beneath the waters of the lake beside which the family dwelt, were put in daily practice by the devoted child.

Two other characters of the story deserve more than a passing word. One was Chingachgook the hunter, the other 'Hist,' a lovable maiden, both of whom were great friends of Deerslayer; they were Delaware Indians by nationality.

(Concluded on page 171.)